Re: Concerns from the W3C Technical Architecture Group regarding JSON

Thanks, Philippe. I’ve forwarded to the IESG and my IAB contact for their information.

Cheers,


On 27 Nov 2013, at 9:31 am, Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org> wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> The W3C Technical Architecture Group has a concern regarding the ongoing
> coordination of the industry standardization work on JSON.  JSON is a
> key integration technology for Web applications and a key data
> interchange format for the Web.  The current state of affairs, where
> there are now two different JSON specifications which may be normatively
> referenced, one developed in ECMA as ECMA-404 and one developed in IETF
> as RFC 4627 and in last call as RFC 4627bis is not ideal and could lead
> to confusion in the industry.  Because the two specs vary slightly, we
> believe this could lead to interoperability issues.
> 
> For example, today there are JSON parsers (conforming to ECMA-404) that
> can parse "42" (a JSON document consisting of a single integer). There
> are also parsers (conforming to RFC 4627/draft-ietf-json-rfc4627bis-07)
> that cannot parse "42" today, but they can be meaningfully upgraded to
> do so too. This would not break applications using those parsers, unless
> they depend on parsing "42" as an error, which is a far more unlikely
> scenario than parsing it as 42 given precedence.
> 
> Regardless of the historical reasons for the current situation, the W3C
> TAG believes that having one definition of JSON would be beneficial for
> the Web and for the wider community of JSON implementors and JSON
> consuming and producing applications.  We suggest that the IETF JSON
> working group should re-enter discussions with ECMA TC39 in order to
> facilitate aligning RFC 4627bis with the current ECMA-404 specification.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Philippe Le Hegaret,
> IETF co-team contact for the W3C
> 
> 

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

Received on Tuesday, 26 November 2013 22:35:55 UTC